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<\/p>\nSuccession star Brian Cox has hit out at directors, calling many of them \u201cidiots\u201d and saying he has seldom gained much inspiration from them.<\/p>\n
The Scottish actor, who played media empire chief Logan Roy in the award-winning HBO series Succession about a warring family, said even though he\u2019s been lucky enough to work with some great directors, he has had to \u201cbite the bullet\u201d a lot.<\/p>\n
Cox, 77, who is now starring in the new Amazon Prime series 007: Road To A Million, said: ‘I\u2019ve been very lucky with directors, but I\u2019ve also worked with some real bozos. And they couldn\u2019t direct a certain thing into a top hat.<\/p>\n
‘But it\u2019s a real struggle sometimes. I as an actor am always look for the great note, the note that illuminates what I have to do, and I seldom get it.<\/p>\n
‘I have to do it for myself, but I don\u2019t want to be in that situation of doing it for myself. We want to be sort of inspired in some way. And there\u2019s very little inspiration comes from a lot of directors. It makes it very hard.<\/p>\n
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Not happy: Succession star Brian Cox has hit out at directors, calling many of them \u201cidiots\u201d and saying he has seldom gained much inspiration from them<\/p>\n
‘I was in a situation recently where the director really was coming up with notes which were so unhelpful.\u00a0<\/p>\n
‘So I had to go through the script and say “that means that, that means that, that doesn\u2019t mean that what you\u2019re suggesting that I should do, because you\u2019re asking for an emotion and a feeling without actually understanding what the intention is, what the point is.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
‘And a lot of directors do that. They don\u2019t do their homework. They\u2019re so busy seeing “oh, the whole picture” that they forget about the detail. All of it is in the detail and that includes the acting.’\u00a0<\/p>\n
He added: ‘I really want directors who can inspire that and sadly not a lot of them do. They forget about the acting, they forget about what that\u2019s about, what the mystery of that is.’<\/p>\n
Speaking in a new BBC Maestro series on acting, he added: ‘A lot of directors don\u2019t understand the relationship between word and image. They understand image and they can go all the way down the road of image. But the words are sort of set aside. Or they\u2019re literal and they don\u2019t get the image right.’<\/p>\n
Talking about the times he felt at odds with a director, Cox admitted: ‘You deal with it with great difficulty \u2013 a director who you\u2019re not getting on with you have to just bite on the bullet. This happens a lot.<\/p>\n
‘And you have to have a sense of self-preservation within that situation. \u201cDiplomacy is always useful. It\u2019s hard.<\/p>\n
‘You have to learn the lesson and say “Oh, I see, I\u2019m working with an idiot, but I\u2019m not going to let it stop me getting to where I\u2019m supposed to go”. And that happens a lot.’\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Fame:\u00a0The actor is a hugely successful stage and television actor and has soared to huge fame as media titan Logan Roy in smash hit series Succession<\/p>\n
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Opening up: Cox spoke about his experiences with directors in a\u00a0new BBC Maestro series on acting (pictured)<\/p>\n
But Cox also said he\u2019d been fortunate enough to work under some great directors in his long career, hailing Spike Lee as possibly the best he\u2019d encountered.<\/p>\n
He added: ‘I\u2019ve worked with some of the finest directors ever. They have been awe-inspiring. They had vision about what they were doing, and what the point of the piece that they were doing is.’\u00a0<\/p>\n
He praised \u201cvery eccentric\u201d Wes Anderson, who he worked with on the comedy Rushmore and who won an Oscar for 2014\u2019s The Grand Budapest Hotel, as having \u201ca kind of really original sensibility.”<\/p>\n
But even with Anderson, he didn\u2019t agree with all the director\u2019s methods.<\/p>\n
He said: ‘The only problem I had with Wes was repeat lines, and I did say to him “if you do that all the time we lose the rhythm of the scene” – and the rhythm of the scene is very important. We have to know where we\u2019re going, how I take on what he says, and he takes on what I say.<\/p>\n
‘If you stop that rhythm every time, you\u2019re actually making it more difficult for how we\u2019re playing the scene. Because it\u2019s stop, start, stop, start, stop, start, and that will always show.’\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Speaking out: ‘We want to be sort of inspired in some way. And there\u2019s very little inspiration comes from a lot of directors. It makes it very hard,’ he said\u00a0<\/p>\n
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New role: The actor currently features in new Amazon Prime reality show\u00a0007: Road To A Million (pictured)<\/p>\n
Cox hailed Malcolm X director Spike Lee, who became the youngest person ever to be given an Honorary Academy Award at the age of 58 in 2015.<\/p>\n
He said: ‘Spike Lee is one of the best directors I\u2019ve worked with, bar none. I did a film called 25th Hour with Spike. His knowledge of cinema is so astonishing.<\/p>\n
‘He has a real brain side by side with an extraordinary instinct. He has this ability of putting you exactly where you should be. You know where to be physically, you know where to be mentally, you know where to be emotionally within the scene.<\/p>\n
‘He\u2019d done his homework, so that when he came with a note it was the right note. There was no argument.\u00a0<\/p>\n
‘That\u2019s the sign of a great director. There are certain directors that you know you can feel safe, and you can say \u2018I\u2019ll do anything because there is an integrity of work here\u2019.<\/p>\n
‘But yeah, I would advise anybody to try some directing.’\u00a0<\/p>\n